I passed Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue mansions. Many were closed, standing empty. I began counting the windows, the rooms. Hundreds and hundreds of empty rooms, hundreds and hundreds of luxuriously furnished homes, and I homeless—shut out. I felt I was abandoned by God and man and no one cared if I perished or went mad. I had a fresh sense why the spirit of revolution was abroad in the land.
Blindly I retraced my steps to the park bench. I saw and felt nothing but a devouring sense of fear. It suddenly came over me that I was not living in a world of human beings, but in a jungle of savages who gorged themselves with food, gorged themselves with rooms, while I implored only a bed for the night. And I implored in vain.
I felt the chaos and destruction of the good and the beautiful within me and around me. The sight of people who lived in homes and ate three meals a day filled me with the fury of hate. The wrongs and injustices of the hungry and the homeless of all past ages burst from my soul like the smouldering lava of a blazing volcano. Earth-quakes of rebellion raced through my body and brain. I fell prone against the bench and wept, not tears, but blood.
“Move along! No loitering here!” The policeman’s club tapped me on the shoulder. Then a woman stopped and bent over me.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift my head.
“Tell your friend to cut out the sob-stuff,” the officer continued, flourishing his club authoritatively. “On your way, both of youse. Y’know better than to loaf around here, Mag.”
The woman put her hand on mine in a friendly little gesture of protection. “Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s all in? I’ll take care of her.”
Her touch filled me with the warmth of shelter. I didn’t know who or what she was, but I trusted her.
“Poor kid! What ails her? It’s a rough world all alone.”
There was no pity in her tone, but comprehension, fellowship. From childhood I’d had my friendships and many were dear to me. But this woman, without a word, without a greeting, had sounded the depths of understanding that I never knew existed. Even as I looked up at her she lifted me from the bench and almost carried me through the arbour of trees to the park entrance. My own mother couldn’t have been more gentle. For a moment it seemed to me as though the spirit of my dead mother had risen from her grave in the guise of this unknown friend.